STACKHOUSE’S 10 WEEKEND THOUGHTS

1 – LABOR STRIFE – Baseball players and owners are taking a beating for airing out their financial disagreements in public and rightfully so.  Originally, I was on the side of the owners here but now I’ve moved over to the players.  With all the minor league ball being canceled, organizations are saving a bit of money.  Both sides are going to lose money they’d otherwise make if fans were allowed to attend games.  For me, the players losing half their salary because they are only playing half of the games is their portion.  The rest is on the owners and whether that’s 20, 30, 40 percent doesn’t matter.  They don’t want to reveal their revenues, so the trade off for keeping them secret is no more fighting with the players.  Play ball.

2 – OTHER SPORTS – Make no mistake about it, hockey and basketball would be having this argument as well except for the fact the players have already been paid.  Those sports are at the end of their seasons so money is a smaller issue.  When a tiny fraction of cases of Covid continue to hold up sports into 2021 (as I expect will be the case), you can bet the financial aspects are going to come into play.  I think it will in the NFL too once we get closer to September and that league also falls by the wayside and is forced not to play.  I listened to a show on the NFL Network a couple of weeks ago where owners are already interpreting collective bargaining language to mean ‘games’ as opposed to ‘season’.

3 – OPTIMISM OF PLAYING – Both the NHL and NBA are looking at mid- to late-July start dates.  Why so late? That’s eight weeks from now.  Surely things can move along faster than that for an early July start.  Or, are these leagues a lot further away from actually playing than what we are led to believe?  How much of it is health and how much of it is actually centred around the fact that maybe, just maybe, these leagues aren’t as flush with money as we think and they really do need bums in the seats in order to put on games?

4 – NEW PODCAST – New York Ranger players Brendan Lemieux and Tony DeAngelo have announced a podcast called ‘Watch Your Tone’.  Politically correct heads will explode at the thought of this going to air so I suspect this never gets off the ground although DeAngelo says the first episode will be released within a couple of weeks.  DeAngelo has a record of bad behaviour having been suspended for 8 games in 2014 while with the OHL’s Sarnia Sting for directing some sort of slur at a teammate. 

5 – MORE REVENUE STREAMS – CJ Nitkowski, on MLB Network, came up with a good idea to help alleviate some of the financial losses by saying maybe it’s time to put sponsors on the uniforms.  Let the players make a bit of extra coin as well by letting them, personally, endorse footwear or put a sponsor’s name on the back of their jersey instead of their own.  It’s outside the box thinking, but it recaptures a bit of money lost.

6 – CFL FINANCIAL HELP – I’m not in support of government bailout for the Canadian Football League, but any person who supports financial support of immigrants should not have an issue with the Canadian government paying a bit of money to American citizens who make their living by playing football in Canada.  Of course, I’m opposed to all of it but I’m also one of the few people in Canada who actually understands that it’s not the Canadian government who’s paying.  It’s me.  And you.

7 – HOW WILL MINOR HOCKEY LOOK – According to an article in The Athletic, here are some of the changes being considered for minor hockey so that kids can continue to play, albeit via less fun but fun is what we aim to suck from life during this whole Covid crisis anyway, so this is right on par with that:  Kids may be asked to get dressed at home, coaches will wear masks on the bench, parents will be restricted in the stands, lobby will be closed, fewer games scheduled and more practices will be as practices have less people involved, no such thing as tournaments, and the reduction of 5-on-5 to 3-on-3 to also reduce humans in contact with one another. 

8 – LET THEM PASS GERMS – The evidence is right there for all of us to see:  young, healthy children are not affected by this virus.  So why is it a hockey organization’s responsibility to protect Little Johnny’s grandmother from the China-started coronavirus?  Shouldn’t each family take their own necessary precautions when it comes to protecting other family members?  My take is an unpopular one:  leave the kids alone and let them play, spreading their germs with one another.  It’s happened forever and significant numbers of minor hockey players have not passed away or been seriously hospitalized.  This virus is deadly to the weak and elderly.  Minor hockey players, predominantly, aren’t in either of those classes although I’m sure there are some senior citizen leagues out there for recreational purposes.

9 – NASCAR  – I like NASCAR, but usually there’s another sport on TV that I like better so I seldom watch it.  However, it’s got my attention at the moment and the hands-down best racer out there right now is Chase Elliott.  He finally won on Wednesday night and could have won two other races over the last two weeks if not for a bit of bad luck.  I don’t mind how NASCAR breaks each race up into stages as it makes it a bit more interesting with these mini races inside the big race; however the strategy of fuel appears to be a lost art.

10 – SOCIETY THOUGHTS – I have never felt that America has had a problem with police officers killing Black people; however what happened in Minneapolis this past week is something that should never ever occur whether there is a systemic problem or not.  The looting and rioting that took place for days after the killing is not something I condone but upon reflection, I think it was a necessary course of action as that police officer was not going to be arrested otherwise.  It’s like the pipeline protests here in Canada or the fact that UNIFOR is going to go after the farmers.  Peaceful acts don’t work as much as we’d all like them to.  They are, largely, ignored and accomplish nothing.  The Minneapolis rioters got what they wanted.  The pipeline protesters got about as much as they could expect to get.  UNIFOR has got nothing yet, but if they disrupt farming enough they will.  I don’t like it, but it works.  And, it’s why Alberta should turn off the taps to any place that has a problem with the energy industry.  I’ve long felt we are headed for a civil war of sorts and the evidence continues to mount that violence and civil disobedience is the most effective option to achieve one’s desired outcome.

BONUS – TRUDEAU WADES IN – Justin Trudeau offered his thoughts on the Minneapolis situation but does he have any credibility when he’s admitted to dressing in blackface so many times he can’t possibly put a number on it?  I just had to mention that as I know a few of the readers live for my Trudeau takes.  You are welcome.  

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)